My Favorite Dexter Remakes and Riffs

I’m a big follower of the Showtime TV series Dexter, currently airing its final season. For the past year I’ve been rescreening the entire run, posting a running series of notes to twitter under hashtag #dexternotes (see the archive in The Nest), and my next personal reading project is to catch up with Lindsay’s Dexter book series (the program is a fascinating study in adaptation, as it departs wildly from the books) in preparation for the upcoming release of a new title, ironically called Dexter’s Final Cut (releasing end of August 2013 on Kindle and in mid-Sept in hardcover). As a fan, I’ve become somewhat impatient this season with waiting each week for the next episode, so when I’m not otherwise rewatching older seasons (the one with Lithgow is my favorite) I research Dexter fan postings on the internet.

Here, without further ado, are my favorite remakes and riffs on Dexter’s now CLASSIC opening sequence. There are a lot of remakes of this out there, as students of film study and reproduce it, and fans come up with clever parodies. These are my faves:

Michael Arnzen is an award-winning author of horror fiction and an English professor at Seton Hill University, where he has taught writing since 1999. His trophy case includes four Bram Stoker Awards and an International Horror Guild Award for his often funny, always disturbing stories. Join his social network at michaelarnzen.com.

One thought on “My Favorite Dexter Remakes and Riffs”

Thanks for collecting these great links, Prof Arnzen! As for your statement re: adaptation… you probably know that the show producers don’t consider anything except the first season an “adaptation.” They basically bought the rights to the character and “world,” but according to what they say at Cons, don’t even read the books. But I guess it depends on what the true meaning of adaptation is and/or how far it can be stretched…

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Play Dead reads like white lightning. The wonderfully grungy characters and staccato-fast chapters grab you by the face, haul you in, and won”t let go, while the richly metaphoric style begs for savoring on every page. Arnzen wears a wry gaming grin even as he reminds us the universe is little more than a horrorshow comprised of pure plain chance. This terrific (in all senses of the word) novel hits the ground running and just won”t stop.